Hard News: A Full Sense of Nationhood
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Funnily enough, their insistence isn't encouraging anyone. I will indeed go ahead using words which have been used in the Kiwi English lexicon for my entire life exactly as they always were, because I do not pretend to be a Maori speaker. If I ever get a Maori translation done of anything I produce, I'll go with whatever the translator feels comfortable with, and be damned happy with them for mastering something so obscure, however imperfectly. If anyone seriously wants to get bitter about the little lines, then they can just do without the translation, like everyone knows they can anyway.
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But, please, explain to me why, anytime someone asks you to do something you think is pointless, it's fascism.
I think you better ask yourself that one, since it's not a belief I've ever expressed or held.
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An umlaut has no value in Māori.
Well, ok, strictly, but a text with umlauts is more usable than one with no marking of vowels. (Likewise, but to a lesser degree, strictly speaking `quotation` like that is wrong; however it is better than quotation.
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I think you better ask yourself that one, since it's not a belief I've ever expressed or held.
Really? So:
the whole insistence on 'correct' spellings and pronunciations of a language that was never written, and was spoken in many different ways, is a form of language-fascism that tries to kill off other modes of communication
wasn't you?
Quickly, someone tell Russ! PA has been hacked!
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In other news, the minimum wage has been increased to $13, apparently. That means for a person on the minimum wage to accumulate the wealth of John Key, after tax, they would have to work for more than 2800 years.
But they won't, coz they're lazy. -
Oh Mark, don't you know? Insisting on non-hyperbolic use of "fascism" is... fascism.
Ben, we're probably only a hair's breadth away from agreement in our actual practice. I am absolutely mellow about informality in quickly-composed text - you might have noticed there wasn't any macron in my previous comment (although there's an argument that naturalised loanwords don't need diacritics anyway, eg naive ).
My concern is with what we might call publication. If you're aiming for polish, for professionalism, for just getting things right, then macrons aren't too much to ask for; they're bugger-all work really. Even in the relaxed environment of PA System, I notice nearly everyone tries to spell correctly even if they don't always succeed, and writes in a way that doesn't necessarily accord that well with their speech, in the interests of communication.
Your comments about Maori are just as true for every other language, including (in fact especially) English. All standard languages are artificial and inaccurate compromises to some extent. As a German speaker you ought to know that no one grows up speaking Duden-style Hochdeutsch, and you must have noticed the huge range in spoken English in the UK. Yet most languages have at least one standard grammar, pronunciation and spelling, and people turn their noses up at failure to observe those conventions in a formal setting. (If you're Norwegian, you have two, Nynorsk and Bokmal, US vs Commenwealth English are arguably two standards, and for all I know there are languages with even more competing standards...)
Keir: umlauts and diareses aren't the same, they just look the same. Certainly two dots over a vowel that is not succeeded or preceded by another vowel are unambiguously umlauts.
Should we update the Wikipedia page to reflect informal NZ usage, do you think?
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Certainly two dots over a vowel that is not succeeded or preceded by another vowel are unambiguously umlauts.
Brontë.
(Yeah, in the main, but.)
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Mark, saying that insisting other people change their language to be your language is a form of fascism is not synonymous with "anytime someone asks you to do something you think is pointless, it's fascism."
Of course I was using the word 'fascism' in an exaggerated way, and not suggesting any kind of Godwin thing. It was being used like the "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld, who was just a dick who insisted on particular behavior from his customers or he wouldn't give them any nice soup. Any reader who isn't too busy looking for my missing umlauts knew this.
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Well, ok, strictly, but a text with umlauts is more usable than one with no marking of vowels.
No, it is not. It is incorrect and has no semantic meaning.
(Likewise, but to a lesser degree, strictly speaking `quotation` like that is wrong; however it is better than quotation.
Say what? If you are quoting, it is equally permissable to use single or double quotes as long as the opening marks are the same as the closing marks. When quoting speech inside a quoted paragraphs, use the opposite type to avoid confusion.
"What do they teach them at school these days?"
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Stephen, we're closer than a hair's breadth. I don't have any problem with people polishing up their work. The problem is with other people pointing out the lack of polish, like it's a really important thing. It just isn't that important.
Of course I know that Hochdeutsch is not that normal in Germany, because I have utterly failed to understand any number of native speakers who diverged from it (having learned only Hochdeutsch myself). But I did not then insist that I was right and they were wrong about their own language. I simply tried another way, until understanding was reached. In fact, I found that my polished and grammatical German got me in trouble, sometimes. Imagine talking to someone who says in a perfect BBC English accent "I'm sorry, my good man, but I can't understand a word you are saying", when you are talking in perfectly normal (for your town) and clear English. You tend to think they are being a wanker. It was only when I made it clear that German was not my first language, that failure to comprehend was forgiven totally, indeed they were usually impressed that I had bothered.
Yet most languages have at least one standard grammar, pronunciation and spelling, and people turn their noses up at failure to observe those conventions in a formal setting.
Some people do. I don't. The more formal the setting, the more I want to understand people rather than get stupidly bitter on irrelevances. I seriously think that making a fuss about such things hinders thought and communication far more than it helps it. You only have to move out of your home town once to realize how fucked up and annoying it is when people piss on about minor lexical differences, and how totally impossible it is to communicate when they do it if the language is foreign. It's called pedantic because it's what a teacher does, not the other 99% of the population, who just want to exchange ideas with their fellow man.
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Keir: damn, you are so right, and I am wrong.
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No, it is not. It is incorrect and has no semantic meaning.
It has as much meaning as the person uttering it intended it to have. Because they are a human being, and language is for communicating, not beating people over the head with, because they happen to be slightly less educated than you.
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Ben: are we perhaps getting hung up on "you" meaning people in general, versus criticism directed at you personally? I mean, if you want people to like you, you should wash every day too...
Imagine talking to someone who says in a perfect BBC English accent "I'm sorry, my good man, but I can't understand a word you are saying", when you are talking in perfectly normal (for your town) and clear English. You tend to think they are being a wanker.
Yeah, but who's advocating that? Or anything like that? That's just a straw man.
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Stephen Judd: nah, the main point stands.
No, it is not. It is incorrect and has no semantic meaning.
This is clearly false; if there are two possibilities as to what a word could be, depending on vowel doubling, and in one version there is no attempt to signal, and in the other there is, then one version will be ambiguous, and the other will not, even if the attempt is not strictly ideal.
(So, f'rinstance, if you can't use any non-ASCII characters, signifying doubling by replacing ā with a' would yield a more legible text than just giving up.)
The point was that I used backticks instead of proper opening and closing quote marks; yet you still understood, indicating that they had meaning despite not being proper typography.
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This is clearly false; if there are two possibilities as to what a word could be, depending on vowel doubling, and in one version there is no attempt to signal, and in the other there is, then one version will be ambiguous, and the other will not, even if the attempt is not strictly ideal.
And still it's not semantic. Try arguing with the point I made instead of inventing one.
(So, f'rinstance, if you can't use any non-ASCII characters, signifying doubling by replacing ā with a' would yield a more legible text than just giving up.)
And yet, if you know what the correct usage is, and you don't do it, it's just lazy, and saying to the reader that you don't really care whether you get it right or not and the onus is on them to understand you.
The point was that I used backticks instead of proper opening and closing quote marks; yet you still understood, indicating that they had meaning despite not being proper typography.
Good trick. I just put it down to your lack of computer skills. ;-)
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Ben, I think the problem between us is the nature of appropriate communication. In an informal setting, much more latitude is given to grammatical errors, typos, and the like. In a formal setting, latitude is not given. It never has been and it never will be.
Trust me, you do not want government policy papers and legislation written as if the writer was writing an email to a mate. There's significant and semantic meaning in how material is laid out and the respect that is given by most readers (though obviously not you) and you really need to avoid unintentional ambiguity in policy papers. Admittedly, both policy papers and legislation could be written a lot more clearly, in plain English, but never in informal English.
I'm not an academic but I know a few - they're far more worried, from what I can see, about making sure that their papers are correct in content, than in style. Yet they know that a certain style is expected by their peers, and that their paper will be disregarded on a first cut if it fails to meet those expectations.
In government, public servants are (in the main) concerned about making sure they don't over-promise, that they don't tread on another department's toes and, most of all, that they don't piss off the Minister or her colleagues. That's why papers take so long. People argue over what it commits them to, not where the commas go.
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Also, I think it's time to break at this cartoon.
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Break OUT, damnit. My fingers have their own ideas about what to do.
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Fucking brilliant! ROFLnui to the max!
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And it comes on t-shits!
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/shirts
see! see! just one little typo and the meaning changes ;-)
(I blame e.e.cummings, myself)
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Yeah, but who's advocating that? Or anything like that? That's just a straw man.
No, it was actually a story about my experience of speaking Hochdeutsch, and how adhering to some arbitrary standard is actually unhelpful in many settings. I'm sorry if it was unclear. I'm not sorry if it was poorly punctuated.
Mark
I don't 'trust you'. Why should I? Convince me, rather than bully me, and maybe I will. You're not my teacher.
Explain to me the semantic difference between "Maori" and the same word with a line in there that isn't on my keyboard. I can certainly see a syntactic difference, but semantically they are identical.
I don't think we're disagreeing that much now, though. You're just saying that a high level of formality is required in some circumstances. I don't disagree, even if I think it's totally lame. I adhere to it myself, generally, just to avoid stupid arguments with pedants. Not because I agree with them, but because it's a waste of life even talking to a pedant about the value of pedantry, since there's absolutely no way they will ever see it from your point of view. But that doesn't make it right, what they're doing, and that's all I'm saying. Meaning is what is important. Clearing up ambiguity. Delivering information. Not the border around the page, or font, unless they in some way hinder the actual clarity.
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I don't 'trust you'. Why should I? Convince me, rather than bully me, and maybe I will. You're not my teacher.
If you're calling me a pedant, which you seem to me to be, then by your definition, I am exactly that.
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What is the best alternative? Might it be Open Office...
For those occasions when I must be perfectly dressed for the darkside I have Word for Windows running in Win XP in Parallels Desktop (Intel Mac).
Otherwise it's the slightly idiosyncratic but otherwise v. nice Mellel. -
I'm not an academic but I know a few - they're far more worried, from what I can see, about making sure that their papers are correct in content, than in style. Yet they know that a certain style is expected by their peers, and that their paper will be disregarded on a first cut if it fails to meet those expectations.
I'm not following you. If you're saying that academics don't worry about formal presentation, I'd have to disagree, but I'm not quite sure it's what you're saying.
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